REVIEW: Bloc throws a party, lives up to hype

One of the things I would be most terrified of, if I were to ever start a band, would be running out of ideas. Way too many great bands have done this. I was almost convinced that Bloc Party would become just another casualty of that same early hype, but with their fourth album (admittedly stupidly-titled “Four”), they have convinced me that they still have something left to give to the indie rock community that has so readily welcomed them for years.

Bloc Party is a British rock band made up of Kele Okereke (vocals, rhythm guitar), Matt Tong (drums), Gordon Moakes (Bass guitar, plus any synthesizer work the band does) and Russell Lissack (lead guitar). They formed in 2003, and some two years later, released their wildly inventive album “Silent Alarm.” It, along with Interpol’s “Turn On The Bright Lights,” and The Strokes’ “Is This It,” helped bring critical acclaim to the nascent post-punk revival scene.

I should probably start off by warning you that, yes, there are some pretty bad parts to the album, for instance, in the opener “So He Begins to Lie”, instead of reaching the unplanned squeal of a guitar that gave Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mayonaise” its brilliant chorus, the feedback that made its way into the songs amazing guitar melody sounds almost sampled, meticulously placed, instead of just allowed to happen.

Other missteps are more about unoriginality than bad songwriting. Album-ender “We Are Not Good People” is both named and written like an unreleased track from Queens of the Stone Age.  “Coliseum” starts off like Brand New track “Be Gone,” and ends like a bad 2000’s nu-metal song.  The treble-heavy, broken chord guitar that starts at 2:11 of the lead single “Octopus” should sound rather familiar to fans of Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic.”

“Octopus” is still an amazing song, though. The shudders of treated guitar that punctuate the song’s catchy riff add a sense of urgency that we haven’t heard since the band’s first album. The “Aerodynamic” rip inspires as it inches skyward during the final minute of the song.

Unfortunately, in trying to replicate the forcefulness of “Octopus” over several songs (“Team A” and “Truth” stand out as the most guilty), much of the album does sound the same. This is a shame because, when this album works, it really works.

“Day Four,” my favorite song on the album, works best not because of any of the rock posturing found in songs like “Kettling,” but instead goes for an easy, slow buildup. The guitar and the drums provide a perfect backdrop for Okereke’s sweet, breathy and sometimes falsetto vocals. Lyrically, the song (much like a lot of Bloc Party’s songs, in my opinion) is quite vague, first saying that “It’s in the trees” and “In the leaves,” but then reminding us that “The city’s here for you.”

The rest of the album seems to skip between personal lyrics, like “Real Talk’s” “Watch the sun set from your sedan”) and brutal, concrete rock (“We smash the window. Po-po don’t f*ck around.” from “Kettling.”) Some songs, like “So He Begins to Lie,” sound almost political but are, of course, too lyrically hazy to tell.

Even if some of the songs do sound a little too close to other bands or even each other, “Four” still stands out as both a return to the sound that made “Silent Alarm” an instant classic and a sign that Bloc Party is ready to get back to advancing the sound of independent guitar rock.